Crossing the border with Blue Jays beat reporter Jordan Bastian.

Questioning Bautista

All the recent talk about Jose Bautista’s incredible power surge, and the questions people should be asking, got me thinking: Why don’t I post what we asked the Blue Jays slugger following his two-homer outburst in Monday’s 3-2 win over the Yankees? So, here is the postgame Q&A with the Majors’ leading home run hitter…

Reporter: How many more you got in you?

Bautista: I have no idea. I’m going to keep going out there and do the same thing that I’ve been doing all year, just look for good pitches and try to hit them hard.

Reporter: Did you know immediately on both of them tonight?

Bautista: Yeah. I got those pretty good.

Reporter: What was going through your head after that pitch that Nova threw?

Bautista: Well, instinctively, I was kind of upset. I was just trying to see what kind of reaction I was going to get from him. I was surprised to see he was pretty defiant. He was walking up towards me and flashing his hands up and started yelling. That’s when I felt that the pitch was intentional.

Reporter: Did it surprise you, considering it was his first Major League start?

Bautista: That doesn’t matter. I don’t think that’s a part of the game that you really want to go through. If he would’ve thrown at my foot, or my leg, or my back or something it’d be a totally different attitude from my side. The pitch was right at my head and got me pretty upset.

Reporter: What was he yelling?

Bautista: I’d rather keep that between the lines. I think that’s part of the game that you have to respect.

Reporter: It looked like Molina had his hands wrapped around you. What was he saying to you?

Bautista: He was just trying to calm me down. He knew the at-bat was going to go on and he was trying to get me focused for the next pitch.

Reporter: It looked like you enjoyed that second home run. Was 40 special? Or was it the emotions of the game?

Bautista: I don’t think it was because of No. 40. It’s a tie game, pretty late. I knew that if we took the lead we needed three outs to win it. Given what transpired earlier, I enjoyed it pretty good.

Reporter: Did you get the ball?

Bautista: Not yet. We’ll see if it shows up.

Reporter: I think you’re aware of the article that was written over the weekend kind of tying your success to the whole performance-enhancing thing. I was curious what your reaction is to seeing your season get tied into something like that.

Bautista: I could care less. I’m part of the program just like any other ballplayer is. We’re subject to testing all the time. I don’t know where this guy is coming from with his allegations.

Reporter: What was your reaction when you saw someone write an article like that.

Bautista: I didn’t see it until somebody brought it up. I mean, I could care less. The guy is paid to write something and he did. It’s unfortunate. I don’t know if he’s trying to stir something up, but when you talk without base, without any, I’m trying to think of the word…

Reporter: Evidence?

Bautista: Not evidence. He’s just got no base to be talking. I don’t know why my name was tied up to it and I haven’t even read the article. All I know is because you guys mentioned it earlier today.

Reporter: Do you feel more of a leadership role right now than at any time during the season? All three RBIs, plus that incident, plus everything else that goes with what you’ve been doing…

Bautista: No, I don’t think anything changes. I’ve always been the same guy. Even when I was a rookie I always talked to a lot of my teammates. I’m not saying I was a leader early on, but I haven’t changed. I’m not trying to become a leader. I’m just going out there and doing the same thing I’ve been doing since Day 1.

Reporter: Did you get a chance to talk to Yunel about what his beef was with the home-plate umpire?

Bautista: All I know is the umpire tossed him out of the game.

Reporter: They had words didn’t they?

Bautista: I don’t know. You’ve got to ask Yunel.

Reporter: When you ran by the mound after flying out in the sixth, did you think something might happen?

Bautista: No, that’s the same route I take every other time. There’s no need to change.

Reporter: Two umpires seemed to think differently…

Bautista: They’re supposed to keep the game under control. That’s what they were trying to do. There was no intention on my behalf to get anything started.

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4 Comments

Damien Cox should stick to hockey or do some research before he puts up a post that questions Bautista or any other Jays player’s integrity…

This post at Fangraphs, the 2nd post they’ve done on our Jedi, JoBau, provides a very good explanation, like they did last time, of why he’s hitting far more home runs than he has in the past..http://bit.ly/c1omwK …..In their early post, about a month ago, they pointed out a similar thing, so it’s not like this information hasn’t been out there for a while and on multiple sites….

Then again, why would Damien Cox even go looking for proof on anything..He only posted this story on Bautista to get noticed and increase hits on his blog….In other words, he only posted this to benefit himself with no regard to any harm it caused others…

To be fair, this year we are seeing much better reporting by the Canadian MSM, in particular writers like John Lott, Bob Elliott and Morgan Campbell visiting minor league cities and writing great articles on some of our minor league teams and prospects-They should be commended for their efforts……However, the hotter the team becomes and the bigger the buzz created, is when lazy slime balls like Cox come out of their summer melted hockey puck and try to capture a piece of the action and make themselves relevant..

Put your metal cup back on those two tiny little things you call balls Cox and either do proper reporting on baseball or put yourself back into your hockey puck and come back out when your season starts. The type of posting you did is not helpful nor is it accurate.

What is wrong with Damien Cox? Is his career in jeopardy… it’s clear the regular dailies are under pressure – maybe that’s the reason for further diminishing the star to tabloid status.

An ‘unnamed source’, and ‘could be the same … dontcha’ think’.. and he calls himself a journalist? If I were a journalist, I’d take real exception with this guy because he just lowered the bar on the profession.

Jose is a very athletic ballplayer and leads not only in HRs, but in defensive categories as well. And, the explanations for his improvement this year can be very clearly explained by highly credible baseball sites, himself for one, Cito, Alex Anthopolous, and batting coach Dwayne Murphy. There are scouts that know Bautista in detail. Maybe pick up the phone Cox, you lazy mope.

My problem with the article written by Damien Cox is that it comes with no proof attached and seems to be the work of a bored hockey writer looking to fill in time before his pointless and unimportant covering of all things Maple Leafs begins next month. There has to be a degree of envy here, Cox covers a team that has no hope of ever accomplishing something…so he ventures into the field of baseball…a sport he has shown to know nothing about…in order to make baseless accusations and innuendo involving Jose Bautista. Seems a little more like sour grapes to me. He’s like the typical casual fan who sees something that isn’t ‘ordinary’ and immediatly spouts the standard company line about how, ‘If it seems too good to be true, chances are it is’. Instead of giving Bautista credit for the season he is having…let’s shoot first, ask questions later and come to conclusions based on nothing but your own imagination. Was comprehensive reseach put into this piece? No. Was Cox privy to inside informaton that could prove his baseless accusations? No. But by suggesting “it has to be asked” he justifies a smear job done for no other reason than to boost his own ego. The Star as a paper has fallen behind others such as the Sun in their coverage of the Jays. This just casts them in a worse lot. I always thought of Cox as a self-righteous pr**k any time I’d listen to him on Bob McCown’s show on the FAN590. Guess some things never change.

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